Escape
by amongthewinged
Summary: How Max and the Flock first escpaed from the School. R&R, please.
1. Kit

_**Just to set the time frame, this is back before the flock first broke out of the School. Max is about age ten. **_

**Disclaimer: I don not own Maximum Ride. I only own my character. Just one.**

I sighed and rocked back against the bars of my dog crate. My stomach growled, loud enough for Fang, who's dog crate was next to mine, to glance at me out of the corner of his eye. I curled up in a ball, trying to make it stop. It didn't.

It had been at least twenty four hours since the evil whitecoats had last fed us. Maybe they had forgotten. Not even a normal person could go that long without food, much less us, who ate like wolves on a good day. My muscles were like overcooked noodles. Angle, lying a few crates down looked limp. She hadn't raised her head in an hour.

The door open. With my raptor hearing, I could pickup the soft tread of shoes coming closer. They appeared down the row, followed by that disgusting white coat these nutcases wore. They stopped next to Angle's crate.

_No_. I growled in the back of my throat. Mot my baby. She was too weak to take whatever torture they were going to throw at her now. The whitecoat knelt down next to Angles cage.

The scientist had the weirdest look on her face. It took me a minute to figure out what it was. Compassion. And sadness. This was probably the first time any of these wacko's had looked at us like that.

The whitecoat had short honey-colored hair cut to brush her chin. A scarf wound around her head and tied in the back, acting like a headband to hold back her hair. It completely covered her ears. She was also wearing sunglasses. Weird, but then again, what did you expect from a bunch of loser scientist geeks? She probably didn't even know what the word _fashion_ meant. I looked down at my own plain clothes, ripped and torn. We weren't exactly much better. But we didn't have a choice.

The whitecoat set her bag down next to Angle's crate.

"Hey sweetie. You look exhausted." She whispered softly. She pulled a needle and tube out of the bag. Angle struggled to sit up and move away from the front of the cage. Rage thrummed through my veins. How could they do this?

The whitecoat noticed Angle's movement. "Don't worry. This isn't going to hurt. I promise." I rolled my eyes. If we had a nickel for every time we heard that, we could probably buy a luxury jet by now. Angle just collapsed back on the floor of her crate. The whitecoat pulled a roll of tape out of her bag and opened the door to Angle's crate. She picked up one of Angle's limp arms and turned it over, exposing the soft white underside. She laid the needle against Angle's arm and taped it in place. I waited for the tube to turn red as Angle's fast heart pumped her blood out of her body. But it stayed clear. _What? _I looked at Fang and he looked back, one eyebrow slightly raised, the Fang equivalent of gasping in shock. The whitecoat looked up and saw us watching. She winked. _Winked?_

After a minute, while we waited in shock, she took the tape off and removed the needle from against Angles arm. In a quick movement, much faster than a weak geek should be able to, she pulled a vial of blood out of her pocket and connected it to the tub. She sat up so it was in clear view of the camera in the corner and closed it like normal. She put the blood tube in the bag.

She produced and energy drink, the kind absolutely packed with sugar, and a protein bar, small things easily hidden, and handed them to Angle before she closed the cage door. Angle knodded weakly and tore into the bar.

The girl, I didn't want to call her a whitecoat because she didn't seem like a rabid geek, moved down the line, pretending to take our blood and slipping us food. She didn't say anything out of the ordinary until she got to Iggy.

"Hold out your arm and don't move." she whispered to him. Iggy's blind eyes were wide but he did as she asked. He looked in my direction in surprise as the needle touched his skin but didn't penetrate. When she was done she opened the protein bar for him and gently guided his fingers to the top of the energy drink.

"Who are you?" I whispered as she opened my door.

"Kit." She replied, so soft I could barely hear her.

"Why are you doing this?" I demanded as she lined the needle up inside the crook of my elbow. It was slightly crooked, probably so it didn't slide into my skin if I moved suddenly.

"Do I need a reason?" Kit responded. She didn't look much older than twenty. She leaned in closer. "Be ready tonight." She breathed in my ear as she undid the tape. Kit didn't say another word as she slid me my food, packed up her bag, and left.

**I'll get more written soon. Reviews always appreciated.**


	2. The escape

**A refresher: Kit's last words were "Be ready tonight." **

**Disclaimer: I do not own Maximum Ride. Just Kit.**

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Needless to say, I was tense the whole rest of the day. I could absolutely not sit still! It may have just been the level of sugar in my bloodstream, but I didn't think so. The rest of the flock wasn't as keyed up as I was, shifting nervously from foot to foot. The light faded from the window agonizingly slowly.

We stuffed the wrappers from the protein bars in the empty cans and crushed them flat, squeezing them through the bars and under our cages.

A while later another whitecoat came in, just as the sun was setting. I looked out, hoping it was Kit. My hope was instantly squashed as he came into view and opened one of the cages, dumping a bundle into the empty cage before leaving. The bundle shifted slightly as the whitecoat's footsteps faded. I didn't want to look, didn't want to see what new disgusting experiment they had cooked up in their test tubes, but a whimper, only audible in my raptor hearing, made me turn my head.

The creature was covered in white feathers, all over its skin. It had weathered beak-like thing for a mouth. The beak was cracked straight down the middle. On it's lopsided face it had two eyes, but one was crusted over. The other was closed in exhaustion. I could hear the rattle of breath in its dried throat, but it was extremely faint. Some of it's limp, dirty feathers stuck out at odd angles.

I sat for what felt like hours, listening to the thing wailing softly. It settled down as the last of the light faded and fell asleep.

Finally, when moonlight was coming through the window and making a pattern on the floor, I heard a soft rustle. I looked up from where I was curled up on the floor of my cage to find Kit standing right outside of my cage. Geezum, she was quiet.

Kit was still wearing her sunglasses. She held a finger to her lips and unlatched my cage. She stood back to let me crawl out. I looked over toward Fang. He was watching me with his dark eyes. Kit unlatched his cage next. He crawled out soundlessly and backed away from her.

Iggy jerked awake when she gently touched his hand. "The doors this way." She whispered gently. He nodded. Kit woke Nudge with a hand over her mouth and motioned for her to be quiet. Nudge opened her mouth as soon as Kit took her hand away. The older girl frowned at her and shook her head. Nudge meekly closed her mouth. Angel was already awake when Kit opened her cage. She smiled at the older girl.

Kit was sheparding us toward the door when the feathered thing whimpered. Kit froze.

"It's that." I told her quietly. Her face fell when she looked at it. She quickly opened the door and pulled the thing out into her lap.

"Poor thing." She whispered to it. "Hush now, it's alright." She said quietly as she smoothed the feathers on top of its head. The thing quieted as she rocked it back and forth. It's eye closed, and it's beak tried to smile. It snuggled closer to her.

Kit was smiling sadly. She began to hum quietly as she reached into the pocket of her white coat. I heard a click as she pulled out a syringe with clear liquid. Tears tracked down her cheeks from under the sunglasses as she gently slid the syringe under the feathers. She murmured to the thing when it twitched and laid the empty syringe on the ground. Kit continued to hold it, rocking back and forth, as its heartbeat slowed and stopped. I was trembling as it let out its final breath in a sigh. _She killed it_!!!!

She laid the thing, now dead, back in the cage and closed the door. She stamped sown on the syringe, pulverizing it as she whiped the tears from her cheeks.

"What did you do?" I whispered. Not because I wanted to be quiet, but more because I couldn't do anything more than squeak.

"It was dying." She told me gently. "It was in pain, and it probably wouldn't have lived out the night. And if it did, it was scheduled for vivisection tomorrow morning." I winced. I had been here long enough to know that vivisection was dissection while the subject was still alive. "This way is painless." She continued. She set her shoulders and walked over to the door.

"What happened?" Iggy asked me as he followed me. Fang told him in a whisper. "And we trust her?"

"I'll understand if you don't." She said. Man, her hearing was good. As good as ours. Hmmm.

"Why are you doing this?" Fang asked her, deadly serious. She sighed.

"Because I was once in the same position." She said. She faced us and took off her sunglasses. In the dark her pupils were huge. She pulled out a penlight and shone it in her face. Her pupils narrowed dramatically to slits.

Kit pulled off her scarf. Her bangs fell into her face and her ears poked out. The fur that covered the perky tips was the same color as her hair. Something twitched in the shadows behind her as a thin, whip-like tail curled around her waist.

"Part cat?" I guessed. She nodded with a half smile.

"My litter and I were some of the first experiments done here, aside from the Erasers." A scowl crossed her face. Must be that dog/cat rivalry thing. "I lived here for thirteen years. The rest of my litter gradually died. By then I was barely alive myself. So I played dead, and they took me out for burial with most of my litter. I caught the guard by surprise and managed to escape."

"I spent the next few years in hiding before I got into collage with a faked high school transcript. One of the things about my… my species is that we're pretty smart. So I did very well in collage, graduated early specializing in genetic manipulation, and got a job here. I've been here for a year, sabotaging a bunch of their experiments and trying to help others. Sometimes, most of the time," She glanced at the motionless figure in the cage. "Sometimes it's just better for them to move on, to escape from here." She wiped a last tear from her startlingly bright green eyes and put her sunglasses back on.

"Wait, what?" Iggy asked confused. Kit lifted one of his vanilla hands to her ear and let him run his sensitive fingers over the short fur and flicked his hand with her tail. His mouth dropped open.

Nudge had her hands clamped over her mouth to keep from saying anything. Her frizzled, curly hair trembled under the pressure.

Kit tied her hair back with the scarf and tucked the tip of her ears back under the cloth. She opened the door and led us into the hallway.

The white, plain hospital-like halls were deserted. Kit led us through the maze, carefully listening around corners before ushering us quickly down, always looking back over her shoulder. When Angel started to lag behind, still weak, Kit swung her up onto her shoulders and carried her through the halls.

I was jumpy. I kept expecting to find scientist or erasers around every corner, but the hallways were dead silent, except for our quite footsteps. The flock and I were barefoot, and Kit's shoes must have had something soft on the bottome of them, because they made no sound at all.

Fang looked about as nervous as I felt. His balck hair was falling in his dark eyes. It han't been trimmed in a while, and he had to keep flicking it out of his eyes as he looked sharply around. Always on watch.

Iggy was sticking close behind me, his fingers just brushing my sleeve. Gazzy looked like an excited little kid. Angel was still exausted. her head slowly dropped down to rest on Kit's shoulder and her eyes dirfted closed.

The walls were beginning to press in on me when Kit stopped at a small side door. There was a keypad next to the door, red light flashing. Kit keyed in the code and opened the door. Nudge opened her mouth and Kit frowned at her. She closed it again.

Being outside was wonderful! We hadn't been out in what seemed like forever. The air still smelled bad, and most of the yard was brightly lit, except for the shadowed corner we stood in. The wind ruffled my short hair and I felt the urge to spread my wings and fly away. Which was completely unrealistic, since we had never learned how to fly. In all ten years of my life, I could count on one hand how many times I had been allowed to fully extend my wings. The urge to do it now, to feel the real wind in my feathers, was almost overwhelming. Almost.

Kit stalked, not walked, _stalked_, along the back wall. She stopped at the farthest places from the building. A fifteen-foot, badly worn stone wall, topped with barbed wire like a generous helping of whipped cream, towered over our heads. Kit pointed up.

"We can't fly." I whispered. Kit rolled her eyes and pointed up.

"We can't!" I hissed. Angel binkled and raised her head from where it had been resting on Kit's shoulder. The older girls smooth, catlike movements had probably lulled her to sleep. She was only two.

"What are you talking about? You have wings! Flying should be an instinct! Get going." She said.

Fang and I looked at each other. He shrugged slightly and spread his huge, night black wings. He jumped, flapped madly, and crashed back to the ground. I bit the inside of my cheek to stifle a giggle as he glared at me.

"Here." Kit knelt on the ground , interlacing her fingers and holding them in front of her. Fang ran a few steps, stepping into her cupped hands, and she threw him up. He soared in the air, flapping wildly, and disappeared over the wall.

As we all stared at the empty wall top, gawking like catfish, Kit looked at me.

"Oh my God!" Nudge squealed. "Did you see that?" Kit shushed her.

"You're next." She said. I shook my head.

"Not until everyone else has gone." I insisted. I wasn't leaving until I was sure the whole flock had gotten out. Kit shrugged and turned to Nudge. I nodded at her and she dutifully ran, her tawny body disappearing over the wall.

Kit helped the Gasman over. He almost didn't make it past the barbed wire. She and I guided Iggy over the wall. He did really well for not being able to see.

"Now it's your turn." She said.

"What about Angel? She can't fly yet." I said. Kit looked torn. "I can carry her over." I suggested. She was probably too heavy for me to carry. I would have trouble getting myself over the wall.

"I'll carry her over. Angel, wasn't it?" Angel nodded and smiled. Kit smiled back and motioned for me to get going.

"You first." I insisted.

"If I go, then how are you going to get off the ground?" Kit said patiently. I could see the logic, but, being the stubborn bird-kid I am, I refused to back down.

"Angel first." I insisted. Kit must have noticed the expression in my eyes because she sighed. I really think I have some bulldog in me, the way I can be so stubborn.

She pulled off her sunglasses, her pupils wide. The light in the yard had shut off right after we had walked out. Kit said that happened every night. She shrugged out of her white coat and let it fall to the ground. She was wearing dark brown pants and a tank top underneath.

Kit shook out her muscles and kicked off her shoes. Her feet were oddly proportioned, her heels rasied off the ground and her foot shorter than normal. Claws slid out from underneath her nails, on both her feet and her hands.

"Hold on tight." She whispered to Angel. Then she leapt, jumping at least five feet off the ground.

Her claws caught on to hidden chinks in the cement. She climbed quickly, reaching the top sooner that I would have thought. Grabbing onto the top, She flipped over the barbed wire, twisting like a gymnist. For a second you could almost believe she had wings of her own. She slipped over the other side.

I backed up and took a deep breath. Extending my wings, all eleven-ish feet of white striped brown, I ran as fast as I could and jumped, letting my wings carry me into the night, over the fence, and past into freedom.

**There IS a little bit more. It's coming soon, I promise. **

**CONSTRUCTIVE reviews appreaciated. But if you just want to tell me it's good, that's fine too. ;)**


	3. Goodby

**Disclaimer: I do not own Maximum Ride. Just my cat/character.**

My wings crumpled as I was gliding down and dropped me on my butt. That was going to take some work. Kit dropped from where she was clinging to the wall and landed on all fours next to me. I could see her grin in the dark. Stupid cat, always landing on four feet. I stood up, rubbing my sore behind.

"Well well well, what do we have here?" A smooth, melodic, all-too-familiar voice came out of the dark. Three Erasers stepped out of the trees.

We all looked at kit. You could see the fire glowing in Fang's eyes in the dark. I'm sure I must have looked the same. Really, how low is it for a mutant to betray a fellow mutant? Really low, that's how low.

"Not my fault." Kit spat. Her eyes were glued to the Erasers. "Patrol."

Angel peeked over Kit's shoulder and shook her head at me. If there hadn't been Erasers behind us I would have relaxed. "And who are you?" An Eraser asked. He shone a flashlight in her face. She covered her eyes, but not quick enough. We could all see slit pupils. "Are you flying the coup too? Well, partys over kids, time to go back." The Eraser said. He licked his muzzle.

"I don't remember you though. Think they'll mind if you don't make it back?" They chuckled as my stomach tightened.

Kit tapped Angel's fist where they met in front of her neck. Angel dropped to the ground as Kit crouched and pounced at the Eraser. She knocked him over as her claws raked parallel lines across his muzzle. They stopped laughing in shock.

"RUN!" Kit yelled at us as she spun and lashed out at another. The third swiped at her, missing her throat by what looked like millimeters. "WEST!" Kit yelled at us. "RUN NOW!" She roundhouse kicked one under his chin. He stumbled back dazed.

"Come on!" I urged my flock. Fang grabbed Angel and began to run. Gazzy and Nudge followed him, fear and wonder in their eyes. Iggy grabbed my arm as we ran. I steered him past the trees. Just before we lost sight of Kit and the Erasers I turned back.

Kit's headband was gone, lying on the ground in tatters. All three Erasers had Bloody claw marks on them. Kit had a fair number of bruises on her. One of them punched her in the stomach and she doubled over with a feral hiss. I could see that her canines, really, a cat had canines, looked different. They weren't quite the fangs the Erasers had, but they were defiantly long and sharp.

Kit dealt out one last punch then ran, leaping up and sinking her claws into the bark of a tree. She scrambled up, catching one of the Erasers on the face with a back claw as he jumped up. Man, I wanted to be her when I grew up. If we ever got out of here.

Then they vanished behind a screen of trees.

We ran for a while. The younger kids were panting hard when headlights flickered on directly ahead of us. We paused, doing our deer-in-the-headlights impersonations. The headlights died and the lights inside a car came on as the driver opened the door. Another whitecoat stepped out.

"I'm Jeb." He said. I had seen him around the lab. He actually hadn't seemed so evil sometimes. "I'm here to get you out." He walked back over to the car.

I looked over at Fang. Our eyes met, even in the dark.

"Well come one, don't you want to leave?" Jeb asked. He was holding to door to a big SUV open.

"We just don't know if we can trust you." I said. He nodded, looking sad.

"Don't worry, he's with me." I heard Kit's voice above us. We all looked up.

Kit was hesitating on a lower branch, looking at the ground. If I hadn't seen her fighting, I would have sworn she looked scared. Finally she jumped and landed on all fours again.

Jeb looked speechless. "I… I didn't know…" he stammered. Kit raised an eyebrow. She looked like a mess. Her short hair was rumpled and lad a few leaves caught in it. She was bleeding from a set of scratches that ran across her forehead and into her hairline. The hair there was matted and maroon. Her arms were speckled with bruises. One of her ears was missing a chink in the corner.

"You must have been part of the SPX program?"

"The what program?" I asked, confused.

"The SPX program. It's what they called my line of mutants. We called it the Sphinx program."

"Whoa, you're a sphinx?!" Nudge burst out. "Whats a sphinx? And where did you learn to fight like that?! Can you teach me? I want to be able to kick Eraser butt! That was…"

"I took martial arts classes after I escaped. And if you want to learn anything we need to get out of here. I lead them in the wrong direction, but it probably wont take those dogs long to figure out I doubled back."

We piled into the car. Jeb took us out of the trees and onto the highway. The flock and I turned to watch the lights of the school fade behind us.

Kit leaned back in the passenger seat.

"I didn't know you were a recombinant." Jeb said softly after a while. The Flock was nodding off around me as relief drained the adrenaline from their system.

"Good. Then hopefully no one else did either." Kit said. She had found a first aid kit and was cleaning the blood off her face.

"What were you doing in the School?" he asked.

"A fair amount of sabotage. Some of those DNA sequences that failed were my job. And I've been helping mutants to escape for the past six months."

"I didn't hear about any escapes." Jeb said.

"Not the kind you're thinking of." Kit said softly.

"Oh." Was all Jeb said after a few seconds. They sat in silence. The thrum of the tires on the pavement was calling me into sleep when Kit spoke.

"Where are you going to take them?"

"I have a place in the mountains." Jeb responded.

"Teach them to fly well. I have a feeling they're going to need it." Jeb made a questioning sound. "Oh come on, I read their files. You don't need to be a genius like I am to figure that out."

"Are you going to come with us?" Jab asked. My mind was clouded wit exhaustion, but I struggled to stay awake. I wanted to know what she was going to say.

Kit was quiet for a while.

"No." She sighed.

"Why?" I asked in a yawn. "Kit, come with us." She looked back at me with slit pupils and a smile.

"No. Too many mutants in the same place are going to attract too much attention. People will notice if I go around wearing sunglasses at night. You can pass for human. I can't." She turned back to Jeb. "Just drop me off at the next town. I'll do my best to draw attention away from you for as long as I can."

"No, Kit-" I struggled to sit up. Why am I doing this? She's not part of the flock, she's a cat, cat's eat birds. But, for some reason, I couldn't bear to see her go.

Kit looked back at me with her hypnotic green eyes. "Sleep, sweetie. Go to sleep, Max. Everything will be alright." I slipped into sleep.

When I woke up we were still driving, but the scenery outside had changed. Dawn was lighting the sky, tall hills had risen up around us, and tall pines towered above the road. And the passenger seat was empty.

"Jeb, where's Kit?" I asked sleepily. "Where did you leave her?"

"On the border of Arizona and California."

"Whaa-oh. Where's Kit?" Nudge asked. The rest of the flock was awake. I looked back at them.

"She's protecting us. She just had to leave to do it." I told them.

_What do you think? Reviews welcome._


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